Archives for May 2012

Tim Cook seems to have ruled out the possibility of an iphone 5coming with a 4 inch screen, according to the website The Verge,Tim Cook speaking at the D:10 conference says:-

” One things is that we’re not fragmented. Look at the percentage of users who upgraded to IOS5. We have one App store. We have one phone with one screen size, one resolution. So it’s pretty simple if you’re a developer”.

This comment made by Apple’s Tim Cook at the D:10 conferenceseem to conflict with most of the rumours that are flying around out there at the moment, that are claiming that the iphone 5 is coming with at least a 4 inch screen. 9to5Mac for example, who are a reliable source are claiming to have leaked images of parts of an iphone 5. As you can see in the image above courtesy of 9to5Mac here is a screen measuring 3.999 inches diagonally from corner to corner.

In reality nobody knows for sure what Apple has up it’s sleeves when it comes to the specs of the iphone 5, Apple have a good record of keeping secrets regarding their future planned products. If Apple fail to bring out a new iphone with at least a 4 inch screen, they are at risk of falling behind its competitors. This is because many of the top end smart phones, such as the HTC One X and the Samsung Galaxy S3 are coming packed with better features like quad-core processors, gorilla glass and almost five-inch screens.

Dell has just released the XPS One 27 to take on Apple’s iMac. This PC is considered the first serious competition to Apple’s iMac from any manufacturer. It has a great line up of top end features that will make most PC owners lust for it.

It comes with a larger 27 inch “Full Quad HD” screen with a resolution of 2560-by-1440, which provides an amazing viewing experience. The XPS One 27 also comes packed with Intel’s latest Ivy Bridge processors, which will provide a supper slick experience. The 2TB of storage it has will be enough for even the most demanding user. This PC also comes with a 16GB of RAM, that will provide you with a ultra smooth experience with no glitches, there is even a option to select discrete graphics card to further boost your multimedia experience.

This PC blows Apple’s iMac out of the water in a number of ways, firstly Apple comes with a slower Intel quad-core processor which is based on the chip maker’s older Sandy Bridge architecture. If you buy a XPS One 27 you get a larger screen 27 inch screen vs the 21 inch screen that you get with the iMac’s cheapest model. Apple’s iMac also looses out on the price front too, it for example has a starting price of $1,699 vs $1,399 for the XPS One 27.

Its important to note that this battle does not ultimately come down to hardware, the choice between operating systems will have a large influence on the buyer too. When the XPS One 27 release is combined with the release of Windows 8, which is just around the corner it might just be enough to persuade many avid Apple users to come into the Windows fold.

The XPS One 27 is out now in the US and some Asian countries. It is expected to be released in other countries around the world within a few weeks.

As the list of countries grow that include the Netherlands and the United Kingdom that are starting to block The Pirate Bays ip address. TPB has responded to this by registering hundreds of IP addresses. This strategy will allow TPB make sure that access to its website is always open. A website called Torentfreak states that “If the new IP-address is blocked again, they will simply add a new one”. This action will lead to according to Torentfreak “an extended game of whac-a-mole.” with hundreds of IP addresses in its back pocket.

TPB have proved once again that they are always one step ahead of the authorities. TPB has been in an endless game of cat and mouse for years and there is no sign of it coming to an end any time in the near future.

A new app has just been launched for IOS its called PhotoBeamer and its made by Scalado. It brings easy photo sharing to the platform with zero configuration. It enables you to share photos from the camera roll with any device and any type of connection. All you need to do is just point your browser to the Photobeamers homepage, where you will find a QR code, which provides your device with a camera with all the clever linkage you will ever need for transferring your photos. It works as well as Apple’s own iCloud’s Photo Stream software, which allows simplistic photo sharing between Apple devices. For more information about this app visit the Photobeamers website.

Scalado the makers of the app have announced that they plan provide regular updates and enhancements and they also plan to further enhance the app in the future based on customer demands. This app is available for $0.99 cents from the US app store and 0.69p from the UK store .

Sony decides to cancel the Xperia Play Android 4.0 update. The reason for this seems to be down to stability issues.

They cited in blog post ”In regards to Xperia Play, after extensive in house testing with our developer teams and working with our partners, we have concluded that a consistent and stable experience, particularly with gaming, cannot be guaranteed for this smart phone on Ice Cream Sandwich – therefore, we will not make the Android 4.0 upgrade available for Xperia Play.”

The developer community and game content providers are reporting the same issues with the beta ICS ROM that was released for the Xperia Play by Sony for developers and game content providers to test.

This will come as blow for Sony Xperia Play owners, because the device is not even a year old. This problem relates to the over fragmentation of Android. As Android grows and runs on more and more devices, the problem of software stability issues will grow even further. Google needs to go down the IOS root more, by having a stricter policy on device uniformity.

Facebook is being sued by investors over its stock flotation, two lawsuits were filed on Wednesday.

The lawsuit alleges that the defendants are accused of concealing Facebook’s revenue generation forecasts during the IPO investors roadshow, which showed “a severe and pronounced reduction” . This action allowed a few investors in the know to sell their Facebook shares before the price fell, while others who were not in the know saw their shares lose more than a third of its value within a few days.

“Some insiders and investors were preferred over others,” The Telegraph quoted Darren Robbins, a lawyer for one set of retail investors who have filed a suit in a New York court on Wednesday as saying .”Everyone made money in this process, but it was the ordinary main street investor who was left holding the bag.”

Some of Amerca’s biggest banks and investment houses such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are accused of not letting potential investors know that the banks had lowered their revenue estimates for the Social Networking site, in advance of the share flotation.

A few Investors have claimed to have lost as much as $2.5bn (£1.6bn) from buying Facebook shares.

The boss of Microsoft Steve Ballmer speaking at the Seoul Digital Forum, has said: “It’s really, in some senses, a dawning of the rebirth of MS Windows. It’s certainly the most important piece of work we’ve done.”

Windows 8 is expected to be launched in October. Microsoft has been steadily loosing ground over the last few years, while the competition such as Apple have been gaining in popularity.

Windows 8 will be more of a radical departure from previous versions in an attempt to capture peoples imagination. It will get a app store and it will be integrated with Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud computing service, which will be similar to Apple’s cloud based backup service.

Steve Ballmer goes on to state that next year Windows 8 could have up to 500 million users, which will give incentives for device makers and app builders to move over to the OS.

The cloud based Music Unlimited service from Sony is now available for ios devices in the USA. It has came to ios in order to try and capture some of Spotify’s share of the market. This service was previously available on only specific devices such as the Sony Ericsson Xperia range of smartphones,PlayStation 3 console, Bravia televisions, Sony’s Tablet S and Tablet P Android slates.

The app will be free to download but it will require a monthly subscription which will be priced around $3.99 (£2.50) a month. Its premium service will cost $10 (£6.30) per month, which will allow users to gain access to offline playback and a few other extras.

Apple has taken control of a domain called the iphone5.com, which was a site that focused on providing the latest iphone 5 rumours. A few weeks ago Apple filed a complaint to the world Intellectual Property Organization, claiming that this website has stolen Apples intellectual property. According to The Next Web the world Intellectual Property Organization has now made its judgement by siding with Apple. Now the website has been taken over and transferred to a Corporation Service Company, this is a company that specialises in brand protection and is apparently in the employ of Apple.

This type of action taken by Apple is not new, the company has taken action to protect its brand names in the past on a number of occasions. The domain iPods.com was a classic example of this move by Apple. But Apple have not always opposed certain domain names that carry its trademarks.

The is a question doing the rounds lately that is asking the question do Android tablets have a future.

The sales of the Android tablets seem to be decreasing, the first quarter numbers from IDC showed that Android tablet shipments declined in Q1-12 from Q4-11. While the competition from Apples ipad and the Kindle Fire tablet from Amazon seems to be growing.

The reason for Androids poor results seems to come down to Googles strategy of competing directly against the iPad with many of its high end models such as the Moto Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tablet.

The reasons why Google cannot effectively compete with Apple’s ipad, range from poorer hardware performances in certain models, poorer availability of decent quality apps and also poorer out of the box user experiences.

The best strategy is for Google to focus more on the lower end of the market more and compete more against Amazon’s Kindle Fire table which has successfully created a whole new market with the Kindle fire tablet, which is has been characterised by simpler hardware specifications and software, which is set at the $200 price point.

Android could even be further hammered when Windows releases its Arm based tablets later on in the year. Google needs to resolve these issues or act to produce a new strategy soon to stop the rot before its too late.